3 MINUTE MONDAY

Hi friend,

If you’re coming to my UK & Ireland shows - I want to hear from you!

Tell me about your worst first date, a problem you’re dealing with or an unlikely life hack that more people need to know about and I might bring you up on stage <3

Head to https://chriswilliamson.live/stories.

Your ability to handle the next unavoidable problem depends on how much of yourself you wasted on the last ten avoidable ones.

This is the Frustration Budget.

We talk about resilience as though it’s a fixed personality trait. You’re either tough or you’re fragile - but resilience is also a resource, and resources can be depleted.

A delayed flight when life is good is annoying.

A delayed flight after three nights of bad sleep, two arguments with your girlfriend and some ridiculous friendship drama can make you want to punch the departure board.

The flight hasn’t changed, the amount of you available to deal with it has.

And this is the problem with unnecessary friction - every pointless argument, chaotic relationship, unresolved conflict and self-inflicted drama makes a withdrawal from the same account that life’s unavoidable problems will eventually draw from.

You cannot control when illness, grief, failure, betrayal or plain bad luck will make a withdrawal.

But you can stop spending the balance on bullshit.

You need emotional redundancy.

Engineers build systems with spare capacity because systems operating permanently at 100% are fragile. Bridges aren't engineered to withstand precisely the weight they carry on an average Tuesday, they’re built with a safety margin.

You probably want the psychological equivalent.

If your emotional life requires 95% of your available capacity merely to remain operational, anything unexpected becomes catastrophic.

Also, drama has an opportunity cost.

Every hour spent analysing the latest relationship fight is an hour you're not thinking creatively, doing good work, laughing, being curious, sleeping, being present with friends, or not thinking at all.

Drama doesn't merely make life worse, it crowds better things out.

And cognitive load lingers because you can spend twenty minutes arguing with someone and six hours continuing the argument alone.

Some people don't take up much of your time but they do take up a lot of your mind - and that's a much more expensive resource.

This is why your relationships are so pivotal, you need somewhere where you don’t have to feel on-guard.

Your friends & partner should generally be people you face problems with, as opposed to one of the problems you continually have to face.

There is no medal for successfully enduring a problem that you could simply remove.

You want to aim for adventure in the foreground and stability in the background, not the inverse.

There are enough problems you don't get to choose, so stop volunteering for the ones you do.

Don't waste courage on a toxic friendship when you can use it to start a company.

Don't spend emotional regulation on a chaotic partner when you'll need it to care for aging parents.

Don't use discipline recovering from self-inflicted mistakes when you could spend it enjoying life.

Life will create enough difficulty without your help. Wherever you have the choice, choose people, environments and behaviours that make it easier to carry.

MODERN WISDOM

I do a podcast where I pretend to have a British accent.
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This week’s upcoming episodes:

Monday.
Tony Robbins - first Cinema episode in a while - how does Tony invest his money, what are the wealth hacks he wishes more people knew and how can you be braver and more decisive with your money? Listen now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Thursday.
Robert Pape - is America heading for Civil War? Who is more violent - Democrats or Republicans? Some really spicy insights here.

Saturday.
Dylan Gossett - the first in a new series with musicians where they do a live performance on the show. Hear songs from Dylan’s brand new album, plus Coal, and we chat a lot of shit too.

THINGS I'VE LEARNED

1.
​Asian Supremacy.

“Since the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling deeming affirmative action illegal in higher education, the population of Asian-American students at Harvard has grown to 41% in the most recent class of enrolled students.” — Rob Henderson

2.
​Two obsessions are one too many.

“Being a really good anything—be it university president, violinist, securities lawyer, or a scientist—requires a virtually obsessive devotion to one's objectives.

Dividing one's attention will give the edge to competitors who have the same talent but greater focus.

For this reason, highly successful bankers who also claim to be accomplished cellists are often neither.

Their banking reputation likely rests on the labours of talented associates working day and night, and their cello playing as likely suffers from the time lost to even the pretence of being a banker.” — Nobel Prize winner, James Watson

3.
​Scared? Try working harder.

"Work ethic eliminates fear." — Michael Jordan

LIFE HACK

Tony Robbins Unleash The Power Within (online edition)

Millions of people have turned to Tony Robbins because he’s spent nearly 50 years figuring out what actually creates lasting change in people’s lives.

If you want to experience his work for yourself, you can join Tony for Unleash the Power Within 2026 from anywhere in the world.

​Sign up for Unleash the Power Within 2026.​
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Big love,
Chris x

Try my productivity drink Neutonic.
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PS
Vlog with Sam Sulek recording this week.